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Gideon Kaspar     It seems you've made steady eastward progress this whole time. From the rolling European nowhere and rinky dink outposts, to the abandoned urban centers of some unidentified previous war, to the rivers and lakes inland, to the actual human inhabited city that was rolled by Hunter not long ago, now you've somehow come all the way to the icy foothills of the northeastern mountains 'probably bordering Russia maybe', having often been visible in the distance, but never so close.

    It's only the fact that you defeated Hunter recently that this is possible. According to Gideon on the flight in, after taking out the Sangvis Ferri ringleader, a large offensive has been launched, and the area re-taken from SF for human habitation again. The local G&K branch has grown rapidly in the months since the Elites started contributing to the proxy war effort, allowing the tiny Sector S09 company HQ to stockpile resources, reinforcements, and build infrastructure, shipped from central over time. There are general skirmishes going on with Sangvis at scale now, rather than tiny operations hoping to fly under the radar, which finally presents the opportunity to push deep into Sanvgis Ferri's corporate extraterritoriality and hit up the research site that the Anti-Rain team was first driven out of and scattered by the overwhelming offensive of SF's secret forces and their mystery 'ringleader' Dolls.

    "Hazel has already reestablished contact with HQ on her own. As expected of the veteran of the team, instead of running from the enemy, she's been conducting her own operations behind enemy lines! She's apparently just stopped off at a depot, so isn't going to be short for supplies any time soon, and has asked that we focus on the orders handed down by Helian at HQ to secure the data from last time. We're going to rendezvous with her at a later date, once she's concluded her intelligence gathering."

    "Right now, our main focus is our immediate allies. A unit of mercenary T-Dolls that work for Griffin were apparently dispatched to cooperate with her, but they've been ambushed by the enemy here; apparently, after the last time their research site was breached, they've had the surrounding territory guarded while trying to capture Clover. These mercenaries are important to our friends at I.O.P, though when I say they work for us, I'll say right now that you might as well consider it a nominal alliance. These T-Dolls have special privileges not given to most Dolls, so if we happen to run into them, just play it cool, and smile and nod at whatever they've gotten up to. Understood?"

"Yes commander."
"Alright!"
"I'd really prefer we didn't meet them at all, but . . . understood.

    You're helidropped into enough snow to make the fact that it's spring totally irrelevant, not an arctic quality, but enough to make the landscape a patchwork of blinding white and craggy black. Up ahead, up a grueling granite incline, a lethally open snowfield, a frozen river, and slopes of sharp rocks, is the perimeter of a Sangvis Ferri outpost.
Gideon Kaspar     Far from the rural pre-fabs seen so far however, this one is a large complex of solid walls and chunky hypertech buildings, using tons of slick metal construction with solid, bomb-proof fortified designs. Despite the odd conduits of purple light going through parts of the ground or the sides of structures, there isn't so much as a window up there. It's also completely wrecked. Not recently, either; it looks to have been torn open quite a while ago. There are signs of partial repair all over, from widescale battle damage, but the core building is opened to the elements in a way that looks like a bomb went off, though what little of the inside you can glance from all the way at the bottom looks like the interior rooms have flash melted in large part.

    Unlike the last few missions, scouting out places, piecing together clues, being sneaky and subverting technology, this one seems to be right into the action, as 'ambushed' is the operating word. There's already a rolling firefight going on in two different locations, one on the outskirts of the outpost, the other around the frozen river. It doesn't sound like a whole ton of gunfire, probably between two small groups, but the sound profiles of the Sangvis units are wholly unfamiliar, and it's difficult to even find where they are at first.
Haguro      To Haguro's credit, she works best when given clear orders. The politics that may or may not actually be in play fly right over the Cruiser's head as the topic of T-Dolls with special privileges is brought up, and she mostly just nods when given the direction to just smile and nod.

     If nothing else, she can at least guess that they're the sort to do crazy, drastic things. That's not all too different from everyone else she's worked with.

     As the Elites are dropped in, Haguro takes a moment to survey the area. She frowns slightly at the fortifications in place, likely due to her preferred method of combat being bombs and artillery fire. Luckily, the firefights going on in two directions means she probably has something less fortified to target! "Haguro, moving out. I'll keep everyone posted once I can see who's engaging."

     And so, the monochrome cruiser stalks her way towards the sounds at the frozen river, engaging in such stealthy maneuvers like jogging in a straight line and hunching over slightly. Her wrist and tail cannons are loaded, but she isn't firing just yet.

     She needs to know what she's firing at first, after all.
Raziel Raziel opts to not take a parachute, which isn't odd for him because A) he has wings that allow him to float down.  B) He could just fall, and then lose his physical body and have to reconstruct it if need be.  Either way, he drops down as his glides in.

'War had touched these lands far more than one might have guessed at first glance.  The building we decided to bore the ravages of extended conflict.  However, quickly was I reminded that the battle in these strange lands was not over yet, for the sounds of gunfire could be heard at a distance.  However, this is the very reason we were here, to aid in repelling of an ambush and aid of our allies.'

Raziel lands on the building itself, trying to take the high ground and attempting to scout out the battle below.  HIs eyes squinting as he observes the battle in earnest, quickly discerning which method to take.  Right now, flanking would be the best option for him.  

'Touching down on the building, I sought to get my bearings and scope out the situation, and from there figure out an effective vector of attack.  Quickly, I surmised that the best way to handle this was to use their own tactics against them, flanking our combined enemy and coming at them from an unexpected angle.'

Raziel slides down the building and moves low to the ground.  He gives a brief burst of radio noise through his own coms to signal to his allies he was there and slowly moves through cover to try and get on the right flank of the enemy, assuming he can move into position for an effective strike.  The reaver, glowing hungrily, wants it's meal, but is not manifest as of yet.
Tomoe This has been somewhat longer than expected series of jobs, then again dealing with rescuing the members of the AR team? Had proven to be more challenging than it first appeared to have been. Still, they had been making progress and there was but one last member to locate and pull out

With Hunter defeated which was no small task in and of itself? Had made Tomoe switch up some of her gear to hopefully better deal with whatever else Sangvis Ferri might throw their way.

"So Hazel is still alive? Good news there."

WIth the information that Hazel was continuing operations she took heed of that and would now turn her mind to the mercs they would need to aid.

"Got it. Smile and play it cool with whatever they have been up to."

It wouldn't be long before she got into the transport and is quiet for the trip until they arrive on site. She'll take a moment to scope out the terrain about the outpost, but her main focus is going to be on the Sangvis Ferri base to get a feel for it. High tech and fairly heavily defended from the looks of it.

Tomoe flares out her wings and takes flight making for the battle at the river. She'll attempt to scope out the new enemy units and move to engage to aid the people fighting them. Whom she presumes are some of the mercs they have been sent to aid. She's going to try to scope out who is who before she engages and will radio Harguro.

<<I'll try to give you some air support Haguro. I'll also pass on anything of note I spot.>>
Axel Taking a helicopter is much different than what Axel's used to, usually taking a portal to a shed or something somewhere instead of arriving in style. Dressed in his black hoodie-coat, the spiky redhead shivers slightly, deciding not to set himself on fire this time to warm up because that was the silliest thing he ever did and only did it because he almost froze to death otherwise. With the briefing released, Axel steps out into the snow in his black boots, and listens.

Gunfire. Two locations. Axel starts weighing the two together, and decides to join with Haguro and Tomoe, what with Haguro being an ally and also someone he's met before, besides other reasons.

Even though it means going out into the open, so Axel moves to stick near the slopes and any cover of rocks he can in the process of approaching. He doesn't muffle his sound beyond what the snow does - he has no actual stealth skills - but he does speak to Haguro as he approaches to scout with her. "When we find them, let's take them from multiple angles. If they're in a fight, our allies will get the hint and take the support where they can get it." Or so he assumes.

If their scouting ends up finding someone exposed to ambush, clear hostiles instead of them getting shot for moving through the snow, he'll move to try and not get spotted, and prepare for the best time to attack. His chakrams take only an instant to summon, after all, so he's not worried.
Ryouma Sakamoto     "Ah, I wouldn't want to have been there when that went off," Ryouma comments on the sorry state of the building, once they've been dropped, adjusting the thicker blue officer's coat he put on top of his standard navy white uniform as a matter of convenience.

    Oryou, by contrast, remains stoic in her school uniform, because she already has a long scarf so why double down on clothing.

    The instructions are clear enough, at least, and he'd wanted to see Gideon's world anyway after meeting him a while back. It's a convenient excuse to meddle and help some folks who need it.

    The sound of gunfire gets Oryou to orbit Ryouma with a bit more zeal, the woman looking for the source of the noise as the man adjusts his hat.

    "That way, Ryouma," she indicates.
    "Right, right. Let's find a vantage point and some cover until we know what we're dealing with," he responds.

    He doesn't delay following after Haguro, Oryou floating by his side carefully. Better get situated and spot the threat before going in swinging, or shooting as the case may be.
Nova Terra     "You want a battle."
    "HERE'S A WARRRRRRRRRRRRR."

    The loud music plays through the interior speakers of the dropship as it plummets down from orbit, on course to join up with the helicopters moving towards the mission site. Inside, a squad of Terran Marines in their heavy power armours are preparing, checking their weapons, finishing off their smokes, nodding their heads to the music.

    Nova looks annoyed though, armour boot tapping on the floor plating as she sits. Until finally she has enough and slams a fist against the cockpit door beside her, "HEY, WOULD YOU SHUT THAT CRAP OFF?"

    "NO! MY BOAT, MY RULES!"

    Nova grumbles in further annoyance at the pilot's disobedience, but is distracted from thoughts of revenge as the interior lights go out to be replaced by red and the pilot announcing, "Thirty seconds to the ground!"

    The dropship engines rotate to quickly slow its decent before landing struts hit the ground with a hard crunch. Moments later the rear hatch opens and Nova walks out, canister rifle in hand. Behind her, the squad of Marines follow suit, clanking down the ramp until they hit the snow beyond it.

    Nova lowers her visor over her eyes and glances around. She's already picking up on the sounds of battle and her suit helps narrow down their locations. The outpost outskirts seem closer to where her troop landed, so she starts heading in that direction. As the Marines begin to follow, she says, "Remember. These bastards use energy weapons. Stick to cover where you can and watch for friendlies. Probably human. Ish. Maybe not... You know what, just shoot at whoever's shooting at you."
Gordon Freeman     One last one, before Gordon can rest easy that this group has all been properly reunited. But first, he needs to deal with this business, it seems. Gordon gives a bit of a frown at the idea that something might be wrong in some way with what's going on with their allies, but people are people, regardless of whatever shenanigans they've been getting up to withoput the watchful eye of commanders and robotics regulation. So he equips the helidrop gear, and gets on going, preparing as he falls. "Hazardous temperatures detected." His suit says, adjusting to warm his body on the way down.

    He remembers open combat on riverbanks well. He's not brought the Gluon Gun with him today -- they need another entire grant for another test run of that motherfucker -- so he'd rather deal with the outpost. For some reason, the wrecked structure just seems... Closer to him, in some way. He directs himself towards it as best he can, and when he lands, he intends to make his way there fast. A silent burst of noise is delivered back to Raziel, alerting that they'll work together on this. "Signal detected. Communications interface online." His HEV suit synths gently.

    Gordon equips a hefty SMG and heads straight for the firefight. "Power assist movement activated. High impact reactive armor activated. Defensive weapon selection system activated. Munition level monitoring activated. Have a very safe day." The helmet slides over Gordon's head and he moves in, intending to blast any SF forces his can get his sights on as quick as he can.
Tony Stark With a slightly haggard look and an extra haggard triple expresso in a capped 'Coffee Society' double cup with brown cardboard heat protecting ring around the center, Tony Stark rides in the helicopter without offering much more than a confident grin and a tired grunt to his compatriots and the mission operator, Gideon. The cup is held slightly precariously in the just-a-skosh-too-large gauntlet of one of Tony's red and gold Iron Man suits, of course, rendering the heat insulation provided by a second cup and a waffle-cut cardboard shell largely moot, but that was how it was served, and so that was how it was recieved. His helmet isn't just open but entirely swept back, a large 'box' near the base of the back of his neck containing most of the helmet apparatus.

"So this last girl doesn't need saving? Fine by me. Makes things simpler. Then again, it's a little overkill to have all of us here doing mop-up or pushes, isn't it?"

A long, pointedly slurpy drag of coffee punctuate's Stark's words. "If there's elite mercenaries on the job, why are you springing for a half-dozen badasses for what your regulars could handle?"

Considering for a moment, Stark shrugs. "Better for the bottom line, right? Because nobody knows what they're worth. Well, I want another crack at a Sangvis network to push my research forward, so..." Stark notices he's the last person in the helicopter, with a wry smile, finishing off his coffee with a quick chugging motion before crushing it in his gauntlet and tossing it out the back -- LITTERING! -- and stepping out, palm and back jets firing off to shoot him into the air.

"Nova, you didn't want to fly in in the cool kids chopper? I'm hurt. You know, this is apparently an exclusive clubhouse mission, you didn't need to bring all your friends from college. Makes a guy think you're trying to replace him, too, with all that hardware. Really hurtful, you know. There's a tear rolling down my cheek."

With Haguro taking point and Gordon groundpounding up the riverbank's center, Tony angles to sweep down near to Gordon's charge and lay into the enemies in his path with supporting repulsor blasts and rocket-assisted fists, leaving Gordon to twitch shoot his forward cone cleanly like the bulldozer he is.

"You can't see it, but it's there, promise."
Gideon Kaspar     "Probably, but you have other skills that the Dolls we have at the S09 branch do." Gideon admits to Tony on the way in. "And besides! If you all get shot, it's still better than my girls! Plus, I don't have to pay to fix you." Startling honesty. Yep.

    Landing in the combat zone basically already is 'the pincer maneuver'. They're ambushing an ambush, after all. Out in the snowfields, by the frozen river, where there is a severe lack of actual cover that will stand up to gunfire, it becomes clear that the mercenary team being referred to was split up intentionally at some point, and is now separated by enemies. The eroded riverbank, its small, frosty little shore and stone cubby, are about the only defensible place around for a dangerously long distance, and despite being wired up with some preliminary heat sensors and a few spots where mines buried in the snow have obviously gone off, there are only two people aidst a small pile of ammo cases and communications equipment. One of them appears to be doing all the other work, while the other is slumped against the rocks like she's trying to take a nap, clutching her rifle to her chest and complaining drowsily.

    At the outpost itself, the gunfire can be heard from coming inside, mostly in one location, as two more operators have buckled down in some kind of core control room just beyond the chunk of the base exposed to the elements. The inside is already a mess of concrete pillars blasted halfway to pieces, melted railings and flats of glassed floor, broken screens and blown-off doors, and that's just from whatever previous firefight happened here, probably involving the A-R team. It seems as if SF has them trapped inside.

    It seems the types of enemy units have been chosen quite specifically too. The open plains are menaced not by standard units slogging through the snow, but by what can only be described as mechanized . T-Dolls wearing the Sangvis corporate black and purple are seated atop tall, reverse-jointed, two-legged machines almost like open-topped mecha, bounding through the snow with extreme ease. They have multiple rotating sensor pods mounted on them like the kind one would find on a military jet, swiveling to and fro to scan the snowfield around them, and alarmingly large double particle cannons mounted on the side, heavier and nastier than a portable rifle. Their sheer height is an advantage in of itself, giving them a commanding field of the mostly flat area while mostly shielding the pilot from below.

    There are *signs* of standard units, having already been demolished by strategic defenses and shot down in the open field, but the mechanized walkers and their riders have made swift progress over the field and forced a retreat to the river. Those that show up to join the battle there immediately have a flank of the cavalry line peel off and charge towards them instead. Multiple targeting lasers swivel on them immediately, and they're soon blasted with a rapidly advancing line of heavy autocannon fire --the overpowered energy weapon equivalent of 25mm guns. It's straight up 'the actual ideal place for cavalry to have tactical dominance'.
Gideon Kaspar     Indoors is much the same in a different way. The Sangvis Ferri units crowding it out include close quarters Vespid units with their dual weapons, but also T-Dolls wearing significant degrees of heavy robotic armour, blast collars and all, carrying shields which are more or less giant slabs of advanced materials with their own camera mounted on the front to see from behind. They basically completely block any halls they advance down, armed with oversized and overpowered handguns mounted with big nasty blade attachments. Worse still, for those breaching inside, they were smart enough to put these at both the front AND back of each corridor squad; even at intersections, there is at least one shield facing each direction, so intruders are acquired and shot immediately.

    It's not a random attempt at repelling intruders. A commander sent them here, and is remote operating them. Somewhere.
Raziel Raziel, slowly climbing down the building decides to head inside.  The outside forces were a bit beyond his skill set, without getting close.  Stalking into them would be pretty impossible, without a distraction.  That, and there were already a group of people on their way...with not so many on the inside.

'The dolls that I could see were heavily armored and apparently armed to deal with close quarters.  The shields they carried made a direct assault more difficult...but if I could do something about those shields, I could turn their strength against them.'

Raziel takes a moment, timing it just right as he waits for Nova to get into position to flank.  He then goes in first, attempting to throw himself into one of the corridors with the Dolls. The Reaver came to life, attempting to deflect bullets away from himself.  As they grew accustomed to his tactics, he too had grown more accustomed to their weaponry.  

However, the first chance that he had, he aimed a claw forward, instead of aiming for the Doll directly, he instead focused his telekinesis on the shield itself, attempting to tear it from her hand and send it towards him.  If he can do this, he spins it mid-air and grips it with the hand that controlled it, aiming to start pushing forward.
Ryouma Sakamoto     That took exactly no time to get dangerous.

    Oryou zooms in front of Ryouma, stretching her arms and legs out to cover more area. Shots slam into her, scorching the fabric of her clothes, but she remains the immovable object sworn with protecting him despite mild pain.

    "There's no cover, Ryouma," she points out.
    "Yes, yes, I can see that," he complains, nervously.
    "Oryou will make some cover for Ryouma," she says.
    "You're going to what?" he doubletakes.

    Oryou beelines through the frontlines, towards one of the walker units carrying a T-Doll. She grabs onto it with both hands, and then attempts to wield it like a club, likely flinging its rider off.

    Right into another unit, and the ground underneath it. The intent is clearly to make a nice pile of scrap to hide behind out of the larger, armored units.

    "Oh," Ryouma sweatdrops.
    His revolver materializes, and he takes an enhanced, flaming blue shot towards the unit she's trying to lift, to make it less likely to struggle. One of its legs, specifically.
Tomoe With Axel Joining her and Haguro in the river gives some new options and she takes note of Axel's plan.

<<Sounds like a solid plan to me, our allies should catch on they have some help. If they need more I suspect they will let us know just what they need.>>

Soon Ryouma and Oryou also join things on the river. She makes note of the other front has Tony Stark, Gordon, Raziel, and Nova's little band of troops handling it. The group seems to have split fairly nicely at this point. Now the question is what sort of enemy T-dolls and drones will they be dealing with today? SHe was about to get her answer.

Thinking back on it their employer was honest, blunt yet still, it was a bit chilling. This bounces about her mind as she comes in low catching sight of the mechanized enemy t-dolls? Yup the T-dolls are driving some kind of light walkers or mecha from the looks of it and they are fairly heavily armed too from the looks of it. This was going to be quite the brawl.

The plan was laid out Haguro would be taking the full-on tanking today getting the enemies attention going in while she and Axel attacked from different points. So that is what she's going to do, she'll come in low and in a zig-zag pattern laying out several fire bolts as she goes for some of the walkers as she blitzes them she will pull her Naginata and attempt to cut the legs of several as she passes by and pulls up again, knowing hit fast and do not sit still. Given the pain that she's suffered in the past from when she has. Also hoping to get these big guns out of the way so Haguro does not get shot as bad.

She has the sense to check with Gideon about an idea to try and jack an enemy walker. No manual controls? Ya bad idea she was not a hacking sort so she'll keep up with her plans to harass and cripple the walkers. She also wondered what sort of moves Axel had, he had sounded like he knew what he was doing, but she'd never worked with him before. Still if he was here he had to know what he was doing, right? They also had the dynamic duo of Ryouma Sakamoto and Oryou. Which proves to be quite the heavy hitters going also for the walkers too, which should help her quite a bit. Then one of them ends up used as a club.

"That's one way to handle it..."
Nova Terra     Nova peeks around a corner into the hall, obviously under cover of her cloak. She checks out the heavy shields and the tactical arrangement of the SF units in that hall before pulling back.

    Nova returns to her Marine squad that she had left just outside. She's still invisible as she briefs them, "They're holed up behind what looks like heavy defense units with physical shields. They'll probably take some punishment and then some. General plan is you guys distract, I'll deal with them." There's a round of 'Yes ma'am!'

    Nova nods and points to the outer wall, "Breaching charges here and here. Go in hot on my signal." A pair of Marines move up and place heavy explosives against the wall, before backing off. The squad readies their weapons as Nova takes cover behind one of them. She then waits patiently for Raziel to make his move.

    As soon as the gunfire starts up, Nova takes it as her cue. She nods to one of the Marines. The explosives quickly detonate to open up a hole in the wall. And if Nova's estimates are accurate, lead right into the middle of the corridor formation that Raziel had started to attack.

    Even before the dust and debris settles, the Terran Marines begin to charge through the hole. As soon as the enemy units are spotted inside, Gauss Rifles begin to spit out their armour-piercing metal spikes in rapid succession, trying to catch them from behind.

    Nova herself follows in closely behind her Marines, though doesn't engage yet as she plans to keep herself from being noticed for just a little while longer.
Haguro "Understood. Once we find them, I can approach them head on. That should.. Um. Make things easier, right?" Haguro poses her question to nobody in the river group in particular, although it does seem she's a smidge more concerned about her non-visibly armored allies as she says that. She glances towards Axel and Ryouma in particular, but... Well. They're confident enough to be here in the first place, so she can't be /too/ worried. Besides, she's seen Axel in a fight once before!

It should be fine.

And there they are. Spotting their targets just as they spot them, Haguro buckles down as she opts to act as the vanguard for the river crew. Just because she's trying to draw the cavalry's fire her way doesn't mean she has to take unnecessary hits just standing there, though! She bobs and weaves to try and evade the brunt of their particle cannon fire, using her tail and arms to minimize damage against those shots she can't avoid. The scent of burning metal fills the air after not too long, though, as she hisses sharply at the rapidly accumulating burns.

Alas, fighting such mobile targets isn't really her specialty, especially with as numerous as they are. The first few shots from her cannons go their way, but Haguro takes note of their mobility and the open field giving them the terrain advantage. Instead of continuing to try and predict their movements, she starts shooting the ground.

She shoots the ground a lot. She's not firing in one spot, though, instead firing all over the place to leave trenches, potholes, and all sorts of craters to limit the cavalry units' movements.
Axel As the autocannon fire rains down on the group, Axel is super happy Haguro's taking the lead. She should be fine - she's an Elite, right? As she takes vanguard, he summons his silver-and-red chakrams in a flash of darkness, before he takes off in a sprint, weaving in and out of blasts. One narrowly misses him, blasting up snow in his face, allowing another stray burst to into his side, forcing him backwards and injuring him.

Sprinting again across the snow, Axel doesn't strike at the machines. Instead, he rapidly leaps upwards, before using a burst of kinetic motion to 'double-jump', boosting in the air above one of the untargeted walkers. His chakrams go flying, aiming to stagger or knock off the Doll piloting so that he can land at her with a stomp to the face and disable the mech's usage. It might bring him into melee...

But Axel can handle himself, as long as the big guns aren't trained on him.
Gordon Freeman     Interior spaces, and high-intensity firefights. Gordon is in his element. He knows military-industrial interior spaces. He knows advanced energy weapons. He knows where to hit a machine to make it stop working in an emergency. And so he makes use of all of those bits of knowledge, quickly and intensely. He surges in as hard and as fast as he can through the breach that Nova is making, and splitting with her to broaden out their forces.

    Go go go go go fast! He books it, dashing quick, and making extensive use of his SMG's grenade launcher. Not for damage, but for disorientation, loaded out ahead of time for the most concussive payloads he could get. His plan is to bash and crash them with the blasts, then close in fast. His crowbar will see extensive use today; he'll suffer whatever heavy shots he has to take from those massive handguns to get in close, slam that crowbar around the side of the shield and to the grips on them, and just cleanly wrench them off with enhanced strength. After that, he's hoping he can engage them head-on in high-intensity tactical close-combat with that SMG. He doesn't bother reloading his grenades or his SMG, either, opting instead to swap to the shotgun as soon as he's dry and start pumping huge amounts of buckshot directly into the Vespids and whatever exposed S.F. heavy assault units he can get his eyes and his sights on.
Tony Stark The whole situation is a mess, but unlike the good Doctor Freeman - with an aversion for wide open spaces and a prediliction for claustrophobic run-and-gun aggressive first puzzle shootan, Iron Man likes to fly high and free.

Which means when Stark breaks off from the tunnels and the outpost (allowing Nova's Marines to breach and clear with gusto and show off their BIG TACTICAL PAULDRONS! to everyone), instead flying off as things get indoorsy to join the team at the snowpacked riverbank and frozen-over waterway.

The 'striders' - Sangvis Ferri's Dragoons - are analyzed from on-high as Iron Man does a flyby.

"Friday, what are we looking at? If there's anything worth having down there, I want to own it." Stark orders, streaking across the sky over the Dragoons and Sangvis forces as the others engage.
"Scanning." Friday replies, Stark's HUD coming up with schematical readouts and best-guess inputs about the Dragoon platforms getting cratered by Haguro.

"Keep on it. Making a house-call."

Stark suddenly drops out of the air, his suit taking a sharp turn down as he goes straight for the two T-Dolls in their lightly fortified position while beaming a G&K signal at them to let them know he's coming.

Moments later, as Friday crunches the numbers, Iron Man heropose lands, one fist and knee against the ground. "Ladies! Afternoon. We're the cavalry."
Gideon Kaspar     At an intersection, the breaching charges go off, and a few dozen kilos of steel and concrete go flying in on the perimeter squad stationed at it, preventing the Dolls they've hemmed in from escaping past them. Surprisingly, the small mountain of flying debris doesn't do anything to unsettle them. The shield-bearing Guards detect it almost immediately, sliding in front and catching tremendous volumes of rubble on their shields without ill effect.

    Raziel is making a bit of a gamble charging them head on in such narrow space, but their handguns are at least more 'reasonably' charged than the fully features weapons used by other units; they're liable to 'only' put a soda can-sized hole in a normie's chest, rather than blow their entire top half off like the walkers outside. The shield he grabs a hold of causes the entire Guard Doll to slide along with it, grinding her heels into the steel plated floor and firing at him the whole way. When she gets close enough, she actually takes a swing at him with the heavy blade on her handgun, before the shield is wrenched from her hand and the Reaver disposes of her. Just in time too. The spot opened up in the formation immediately has the Rippers inside shooting at him, and in these quarters, they basically can't miss.

    It turns out the shield is extremely sturdy, effectively tank battleplate rather than some limited riot shield, though even it starts to melt under Sangvis Ferris' own weapons. The Terran Marines achieve the goal of increasing the number of targets to shoot at by a lot, and quickly divide attention. They're even bigger and harder to miss targets than Raziel though, and are quickly just trading fire stand-and-deliver style like a Napoleonic era gun line. Magnetically accelerated spikes punch deep gouges into the ostensibly unarmoured yet sturdy artificial bodies of their opponents, soaking up surprising amounts of fire before going down, unflinching as they blast back with deluges of energy weapons fire. The Guards move to body block them and physically smash them with their shields, while the Rippers just empty into them with dual-wielded carbines. It's a messy and brutal punch-up, where the Sangvis T-Dolls don't really have any means to back down, and so are expended by their commander to inflict maximum damage on the group with no regard for self-preservation.

    Gordon's usual close quarters tactics still work fairly well, especially on all these targets clustered so close together when he puts grenades into their formation. It seems he won't remain unchallenged with that crowbar forever, though. He manages to scatter and damage the Rippers inside the shield square, but the Guards themselves are much sturdier, and designed with EOD-styled armour. They form together to wall him out, hitting him with body blows from the heavy armour slabs on their arms and thrusting and chopping with their oversized pistol bayonets --pretty basic, but more effective than other line units have been designed for close combat so far.

    The three Anti-Rain members maneuver to an adjacent hallway from behind, catching the formation from the last remaining angle, so that they're surrounded by Gordon and Raziel on one side, Nova and the Marines on another, and theoretically the G&K mercenaries just up ahead. Everyone can tell, because a split second after Clover yells "Now! Attack!", Rose is already yelling "Better hide carefully behind those shields you IDIOTS!" and immediately firing far more grenades than Gordon wants to spare into the same formation, looking to overwhelm the Guards with sheer force. Where the shields shift even the slightest inch, Violet then picks off the units behind them with ultra-precise single shots, usually right between the eyes or beneath the collar, glued to her scope, only murmuring "Go ahead. I'll be the one who delivers the fatal blow, as usual."
Gideon Kaspar     Between the three approaches, the roadblock they have is rapidly starting to crumble, but the units already engaged in the rolling firefight up ahead seem to be sending reinforcements back. The one corridor nobody is currently occupying is suddenly filled with a rush of new T-Dolls, putting a pair of fresh Guards ahead of a squad of Vespids, now putting precise heavy rifle fire into the assembled group.

    Outdoors, things are simpler, if faster paced and more frenetic. The Dragoons are a good twelve feet tall at least for clearance, and all their mass being at the top of their legs means that they're difficult targets to solidly hit with artillery shells. They make good time leaping over or suddenly swerving around the holes Haguro leaves for them, with that uncanny sort of gyro-balance belonging to a Boston Dynamics video. The smaller, faster cannons have an easier time actually scoring hits, but even then, it turns out they're much more heavily armoured than the usual robotic drones, able to absorb a few explosives to the face before really faltering.

    The riders, Axel finds, are definitely the weak link, since they aren't even armed. Due to the fact they've just been refitted as cavalry operators though, they're surprisingly sturdier than the higher performance general combat models, and it takes some wrestling and smashing to actually dispose one of its ride. True to what Gideon had said, it has no triggers or pedals for manual operation. Sangvis only sells these things to be operated by T-Dolls, so there's no good old-fashioned army reliability here.

    It's also sort of inevitable that, as tired a cliche as it is, the joints of anything that moves are the highest stress point, and where Tomoe can come in with her naginata, she can cleave pretty deeply into the motive systems when she can get between the surprisingly tight seams. They're mostly quite sufficiently plated, without exposing a dust cover. One of them stops moving completely, another topples over, and a third drops hull down and turns to fire on her from behind as she passes through. The damage even to a shield indicates that she's no longer dealing with PvP attacks; these are vehicle-scale weapons, and deal what amounts to 'miniboss damage'.

    They're obviously not meant for grapples though (no arms, duh), so Oryou has an easy time of charging one down and picking it up, swinging it like a club and trashing the nearest two riders, sending their machines toppling to the ground and crashing into the ice, sinking into the water and becoming unretrievable. A couple open up on her specifically with all of their cannons, but another two directly target Ryouma, apparently identifying him as Oryou's 'operator' in some capacity.

    Tony swooping down on the two in the alcove finds that these mercenaries at least clearly arent wearing any G&K livery. They look like a couple of girls who actually dressed themselves, and more or less for the weather.

    One is in a black and grey heavy hooded jacket and boots, with a big carry satchel, exo-frame pneumatics attached to her arms and legs, and what looks like a UMP about twice the size it needs to be. She just colour coordinated it with a bunch of striking yellow accents to go with her yellow unit armband, and appears to have some damage like an anime eye scar over her left eye. The other looks like she barely could have given less of a shit getting dressed, having not even tied her boots, slapped a jacket on top of another jacket and a cap on top of a bandana along with a scarf, and has the worst case of bedhead Tony has ever seen, holding some German spacemagic rifle like she can scarcely be assed to lift it.
Gideon Kaspar     "Wha . . . geez! Dont scare me like that! Griffin said thered be reinforcements, but you should inform me if youre going to be that weird. Eleven! Wake up! We have new comrades!" "But I just got comfortable . . . Im really too tired to fight, so cant you just handle it yourself now that theres reinforcements, Nine?" "Or I could just get Forty-Five to leave you behind~" "Wah! No! Shell totally do it! Dont kid around!" "Then get up and fire your weapon already!" "But the ammo . . ." "You have plenty! You havent done anything all mission!"

    The former turns from hurling a grenade at one of the Dragoon units, upsetting its balance and sending it crashing into the snow, and then talks to Tony during the time it takes to reload, while the tired one sluggishly rolls over onto her front and begins firing prone. "Well, since youre here now, well just have to work together~ Dont worry, this may look like a total mess, but this is just a typical operation for the 404. Im sure Forty-Five has a plan, as usual. Are you here for the data? Weve been paid to retrieve the information that the Anti-Rain team messed up collecting. The region is supposed to be under the control of Agent, but instead we ran into a completely different Ringleader! No data on her at all!"
Raziel Raziel's blade flares as it cuts down the T-doll, devouring whatever soul-like thing that may have existed, or whatever essence or energy it can.  However, the shield in his hands is already starting to melt.  However, it is not before too long the other parts of the trap have been sprung.  He pushes forward, aiming to close ranks with Gordon so he doesn't get overwhelmed.

Raziel charges forward with the shield first, aiming to try and smash into the shield of the other T-dolls first, aiming to try and use his superior undead strength to attempt to clash.  Then, with a vicious thrust, aims to send the Reaver in, as the shield would be off place, and attempt to put it directly into the chest of this one.  

However, before they know it, from another hall they are being shot at.  Raziel takes a shot to the leg, causing him to cry out in sharp pain, but quickly turns around, aiming to put his shield to try and cover both himself and Gorden from the rifle shots.  Of course, this means he's forced to play defensively.  
Gordon Freeman     Don't stop, never stop. Gordon's momentum can't be broken. Where he can't advance, he bounces. Blades slam against heavy reinforced plating and active armor, provoking bruising and draining his power reserves, but he doesn't stop. As they suffer the impacts of Rose's grenades, Gordon decides to spare some of his own. He bounces, weaves, and maneuvers, and notices the Vespid phalanx of sorts. Grenades zip into one hand, as a magnetic plate at the palm attracts them from their hardpoints at his thighs.

    He can't afford to let them form a line. He rushes, weaving behind Raziel's shield for that crucial extra cover he provides and getting a life-saving discount on the defensive energy costs when he charges right into the main line. He tries to leap enough to jam his upper torso over one of those shields. He can't crowbar that armor off, but he can slam the straight end of the crowbar through a gap somewhere near the blast collar, wrench it as far open as he can, and stick a grenade in it, pulling his hand away with the pin and trying to kick off the shield and force the Guard back towards the Vespids; his hope is that it will shortly be a /tremendous/ enhancement of the way normal frag grenades work out, and give him a gap he can start blasting away through by storming with his shotgun.

    Past these are the main forces menacing the 404 operatives, right? He needs to distrupt them. He knows that all of death-dealing is a science, and that any good science can only be done in conditions of isolation. He intends, very much, to break that isolation with flung grenades and a charging-up Tau Cannon; the moment there's a gap in the line is when he makes his enhanced break for it.
Nova Terra     Marine power armour is tough. And the Sangvis Ferris plasma weapons are deadly. As the SF units open up on the Terrans, the shots begin to melt through the neosteel plating. But the Terrans seem fearless as they continue their assault, ever pushing forward.

    As the larger Guards move in to clash against the Marines with their shields, the Marines push back, leveraging the enhanced strength of their suits to wrestle with the large shields. Trying to create an opening for another Marine to jab his rifle into and unload on the Guard.

    While the Marines clash against the SF units, Nova deftly maneuvers her way through the skirmish. She hasn't struck yet, looking for the ideal opportunity to do so. And it comes in the form of the SF reinforcements.

    There's a brief shimmer in the air as Nova leaps over the large shields of the reinforcing Guards, before landing amidst the Vespids who are trying to wear the allied group down at range. The invisible Ghost reaches up to grab her psi-blade, before beginning to stab and slash at the ranged units, hoping they aren't very formidable close range fighters.

    The arrival of the mercenary team doesn't go unnoticed, Nova calling out, "Hey! You guys ready to get out of here or what!?"
Haguro Horses, these things are not. The Dragoons' mobility would be easier to appreciate if they weren't hurtling around and blasting her with sustained fire. She finds it easier to avoid being shot at as their numbers dwindle thanks to Axel targetting the riders directly, Tomoe hitting their joints, and Oryou just brute-forcing them against each other.

Naturally, she's going to try working with the opening provided by her allies. Haguro doesn't forget the task she's given herself in defending her allies first and foremost, though, as the Dragoons turn their attention towards her allies rather than herself. Tomoe and Oryou are a little too far for her to shield, and Axel's out of the question what with climbing on the Dragoons themselves. Ryouma, though?

Ryouma's close enough. Hurling herself over one of her own craters, Haguro skids to a stop in front of Ryouma as she whips her tailhead around. It crosses over her side, swinging over just in time to miss the Dragoon's shots completely and leaving the Cruiser to eat those shots to the chest head on.

How do all those sword-users make it look so easy? Staggering back from the shot, Haguro has her tail bite into the ground to steady herself while she brings her arms up to fire rapidly at the offending Dragoon's joints.  "Ggh... A-are you okay? Take cover if you..."

Right. There's not a lot of cover around. "... Stick behind me. Th-they're not as strong as they look." She lies through her teeth as smoke rises from her wound and her eye flickers as the blue glow intensifies.
Ryouma Sakamoto     Two machines sink into the ice.
    Oryou looks down at the hole like a dejected, sad puppy who didn't notice the door was open but the screendoor wasn't.

    "Ah... did you forget we're on a body of water...?" Ryouma asks.
    "Oryou thought it would be sturdier," she says.
    "The effort's appreciated!" he beams at her regardless.

    This moment of entirely too casual interaction results in the both of them getting shot at, although it seems Ryouma lucks out through Haguro's intervention. Oryou, less lucky, eats a full volley from from several of the remaining dragoons, and crashes into the ice (and then, the icy waters underneath) with a yelp of pain.

    Ryouma doesn't seem too worried.

    "Ah, thank you," he starts, before giving Haguro quite the puzzled look. "You... look different. I must have missed something, ahah..." It'll have to wait until they're not getting shot.

    Though speaking of that...

    Black and red tendrils surge out of the ice, a storm of hair as sharp as any blade that, in the absence of being able to aim precisely through an opaque layer of ice, settles for flailing dangerously where the serpent remembers the walkers being.

    Oryou might be hard to deal with for those things when she's in her element, though she'll only be willing to put up with the ice cold water for so long before it makes her slow and uncomfortable.

    Ryouma, for his part, is quite content to remain behind Haguro and occasionally take a shot with his trusty revolver. It's nothing compared to those T-Dolls' fancy energy weapons, but magic more than makes up for the lack of raw firepower. And a good eye, aiming to disable shoulders or vital equipment before anything else.
Tomoe Tomoe is very thankful for Haguro's support she's freed up from being the tank today and she'll keep tabs on Axel who makes any concerns Tomoe might have had about him vanish as if they were mist before an inferno. She'll move to try and help tie up any big guns that do try to get pointed at Axel, however. It seems the plan is having a positive effect so far but they are not done yet, as fresh units join the rolling fight.

The fight is fast and frantic, as the Dragoons are proving to be fairly serious foes here, the designers did a good job in protecting the joints as several strikes do not get somewhere damaging, she's able to down or hamper them.

She finds out the hard way as she's caught in the back and it's a hell of a hit, this is not PVP grade weapons nope this is clearly Vehicle base thing and they are proving her idea to try and keep them tied up was a good one. The question is how long can she keep this up as there's a jagged red wireframe 'hole' on her back from the hit as she rises up and does not engage in melee now, even as Axel is downing riders and taking them out and Haguro is really taking more heat than she is as is Ryouma.

It's time for her to change tactics and she will rather than going after the walker's legs now she's going to start targeting the pilots, she'll get back into the air and focus a mix of light ray spells and high-speed melee attacks going after the riders, starting with the one that just shot her. She needs to help thing them out to take pressure off the rest of the team fighting here.
Tony Stark Considering that at the last expo that Gideon held, G&K livery appeared to be 'mismatched thigh-high stockings' as a uniform point, Tony finds the matched aesthetic and personality-based stylings refreshing. His helmet retracts back into the neckpiece once more, revealing that he is not, in fact, some random chunky android with an attitude.

"Well, down there, there's a few others tearing it up. But you're right - we're here for the data. Three members of the Anti-Rain team are also here, but I'm more interested in the local ringleader. This Area - S09 - has had an absurd number of Ringleaders, hasn't it? Three already, and just targeting the A-R team. Do you have any intelligence on the latest one?"

His question is immediately answered: They don't, but Agent was supposed to be here. "We dealt with her already. I... think. Can't keep their names straight."

Friday's analyis begins to come in, but the data's too fragmented from just browsing channels and long-ranged probing. "They're certainly being controlled, but I can't get a good hook into them. You girls good at precision sniping? If I get my hands on one, I can start a real probe into their network.

"And if you're for hire, consider it a cash bonus for live retrival." Stark adds, his helmet clicking back over his head.

Following 'Eleven's' firing line with her German watch magic bullets, Iron Man flies out, angling towards where people are fighting once more.

"Detective, maybe you can help out: If we can land a disable on one of the Dragoons, I can work my magic."
Gideon Kaspar     Frantic and deadly close combat inside the wrecked facility leads to Raziel taking up a new shield from a skewered Guard to replace his last one, rapidly melted down to the skeletal frame. He sets up just in time for Gordon to zigzag behind it when the blistering volley of searing green comes his way, then leap directly over the front line and plant his overpowered Source engine grenades into the back line, filling the hallway with the deafening *whump-boom* of the frag going off in extremely close quarters, blowing one of the Guards to pieces and smashing the other into a concrete divot, riddled with shrapnel.

    The Vespids, being mid-range sharp shooters, are not the kind prepared to deal with psi-blades. Generally, only the oddball Executioner was actually a force to be reckoned with in close combat. They don't last long under Nova's joint assault with Gordon, both unable to see her clearly and unable to effectively shoot her so close. The intersection is still a mess, with the tight cluster of remaining T-Dolls literally jamming their muzzles into Marines and blasting away until it becomes no longer possible, but the A-R trio is moving up behind and quickly gunning down the only remaining Guards protecting their flank, scything down the obstruction in front of Raziel.

    Breaking through the reinforcement squad, the responders end up in a room that somehow seems even *more* trashed than the portion of the facility that was outright exploded, with huge slabs of shock-proofing and armour just dangling from the walls where they aren't piled on the ground alongside chunks of collapsed roof. There are banks of monitors and servers everywhere, but no power, and they look pretty thoroughly broken. The *least* destroyed thing in the room is the cobbled together barricade of retrieved armour plates in the otherwise bare square depression in the center of the area, littered with S.F. corpses.

    Those Elites run into the other two members of the '404'. One is almost a dead ringer for a twin of the girl Tony is dealing with, wearing the same black and yellow, and with matching battle damage over the opposite eye, though with more subdued, silver-brown hair rather than bright red-gold. The other has a blue black and red snow jacket, wearing some sort of special forces evocative beret and equally heavily supplied, though bearing an assault rifle. She looks the most snowflake of the squadron, with anime silver hair and bright green eyes, as well as a tiny red teardrop tattoo, but contrary to all logic, it's one of the near-identical twins that is apparently squad leader.

    "Ah, there you are. Almost twenty minutes behind schedule. But then, we were here twenty minutes ahead. Human commanders are efficient, aren't they~?" "Yet another part of the plan you didn't tell me, Forty Five?" "I don't need to tell you anything, Four-Sixteen; all I need is for you to trust me, and you do." "One of these days it's not going to work out like that." "Your grumbling is noted. I'll bring it into consideration the next time I assign you a position in a high risk operation." "Don't even joke about that." "I'm not~"

    The twin-leader stands up, waving lackadaisically to the group. "I hope you didn't sustain too many casualties on the way in. We were caught off guard by a new Sangvis Ringleader in the area, but it's very possible that Agent may be dispatched here at any time. It might have been Intruder's job to keep us occupied to buy time until she got here, so with the data in hand, I'd like to leave as soon as possible."
Gideon Kaspar     Outside, things haven't wrapped up quite as simply. Even in small numbers, the Dragoons have tactical mastery of open, movement-slowing terrain, and fight more or less with impunity. When Haguro makes herself a !human shield in front of Ryouma, they split up to flank around her, firing constantly to keep her in place and make her flex that battleship durability, so that turning towards one leaves her open to the other, until they can get a bead on Ryouma himself. One stumbles and crashes after taking one too many magically charged revolver bullets, but they're relentless.

    With Oryou under the ice though, they can't visually acquire her, and being a water serpent dark spirit thing, her thermals don't stand out too well under a half foot of it. Hair blades slashing up from underneath, even if they're blindly aimed, are also blindspot attacks, and a huge field of them ripping up the area inevitably catches and trashes the lower legs of several units, or else breaks the ice thoroughly enough to dunk them into the drink as well. Those that stop short and fire back at her are facing the reality that water is a *really* good guzzler of thermal energy, and the massive clouds of scalding hot steam show how much their shots are blunted by the water in the way.

    Up in the air, Tomoe is a little safer, as the Dragoons are using fixed cannons for mobile frontal assaults, and not anti-air weaponry (really, has an aircraft actually showed up in combat here before? there must be a reason only the tiny scout Drones ever play air support). They have to stop and change their posture to elevate their guns high enough to hit her, and their pilots are exposed to her magic attacks from above, blasting several of them clean off their craft.

    "Three? So that's all of them except M-16~ That's probably a good thing. Four-Sixteen and her have some history, so it's probably best they not meet face to face right now~ Ah, don't mention I told you that though! Four-Sixteen will get mad at me!" Forty Five interrupts the dialogue for as many rounds as her name put downrange on one of the Dragoons menacing Ryouma, resuming where she left off during a reload.

    "Her designation is Intruder. She's not in the Sangvis Ferri product catalogue at all. Unlike Scarecrow, Hunter, and Executioner, she isn't specialized in direct combat, but has the majority of her abilities in commanding and e-warfare. That's as far as we've discovered with our advance recon, at least." She shakes her head. "You wouldn't have dealt with Agent yet. As far as we've recorded, she seems like Sangvis' second in command; she's the right hand of whoever their leader is. She's really scary too! She totally crushed the response force sent to rescue the A-R guys the first time! I'd *really* rather not be here if she *does* show up!"

    If Tony is really trying for it, securing one of the Dragoons relatively intact is onerous, but not fatally difficult. Without a rider, it enters an automatic attack state, until its weapons and mobility are damaged enough to force it again into an idle state, broadcasting a retrieval and repair signal.
Raziel 'The room we entered was in somehow in worse shape than the hallways outside, just after we finished fighting with them.  There in the room waiting for us was a strange T-Doll, already carrying on with the Dolls we had coordinated with.  Telling by her tone, she was arrogant and self-assured in their superiority. Regardless of world or time, those who compare themselves to humanity as a measuring stick, always seem to talk down on them when their successes outshine their makers.'

Raziel regards the leader with a wave of his claw, "Well met, and no we did not," Raziel says as the body was already reconstructing itself due to it's projecting nature and the fact that he had a chance to recently feed.  He allows others to take point in figuring out where to go from there, but Raziel considers the situation for a moment.

"Well, if we are ready, perhaps we can simply consider withdrawing before our enemy has time to regroup and rally."
Ryouma Sakamoto     Whether it's due to the shots or the cold water, eventually Oryou surfaces and exposes herself to the dragoons' cannons, the tendrils of hair having withdrawn moments before. Her hair still slithers about, though she's completely drenched now. Energy shots do a decent job of drying her up, at the expense of precious, precious HP. And pain. Furious, she seems about to take a deep breath, flames dancing in her mouth, when-

    "Ah, Oryou, no! The legs and cannons, leave the bodies intact!" Ryouma pleads.

    Oryou swallows her own flames, so to speak.
    "Oryou will delimb them," she nodnods.

    Effort is actually put into this. It's a request from Ryouma, after all. She rushes one of the dragoons, essentially to land against it. Her hair slices at the legs. One hand reaches out to grab and crush a cannon. The other to lift the rider up by the collar and hurl it into the water.

    Ryouma, behind Haguro, can only wait for a good chance to act. He seizes one, as soon as he finds it - at the expense of taking a shot to the arm, he suddenly surges out from behind Haguro, unnaturally fast, his revolver holstered and katana appearing in its place from motes of blue light. He dashes past a dragoon, and the katana is down when he stops.

    And anime slashstorm occurs afterwards, targetting the legs, weapons, and the rider's hands and shoulders, without intent to cut the rider's limbs off wholesale, just hurt enough to maybe motivate them to retreat.

    Whether or not these are people, Ryouma just can't bring himself to savagely dismember someone like that.
Nova Terra     Nova's Marines are taking a beating as more plasma fire is aimed against them, at close range no less. A few of the large troopers have been pulled back out of the fight after one or more shots managed to get through all their armour and melt away part of them inside. The skirmish is proving taxing as those that remain aren't quite as aggressive as they started out.

    Thankfully, the hallway battle is slowly lessening. The timely intervention of the half the mercenary squad helping to cut down on SF numbers. Until further orders though, the Marines keep trying to fight the robots. Resorting to whacking them with the ends of their rifles or trying to tear them apart with their power armour hands.

    Having managed to push through with the others, Nova decloaks as they find the remainder of the mercenary team. Watching their discussion for a moment, Nova eventually nods in agreement with Raziel, "We can rate each other's battle performance later. Time to go."

    Nova puts her psi-blade away and retrieves her rifle. This is probably going to be a bit run and gun, so the range will help. She begins to head out again, assuming the mercenary team moves too. As she does, she radios her troops, "Objective located. Prepare to withdraw."
Tomoe The fight with the Dragoons goes on and it's not wrapped up yet as they are facing the Dragoons in an environment they are very much made operate well in. The thought about why we little air power has been brought to bear against the enemy before, outside of Elites? Isn't lost on Tome but anything she can waste much thought process son at the moment. She' still taking fire and she's having a far better time of not getting though through the earlier hit Tomoe suffered? Is still painful and very much has likely done damage all the way through her Avatar to her meaty core.

She'll bob and weave through the air as she picks off a few with spells and drops the volume of fire form the Sangvis Ferri heading her way and she'll keep up with the blitzing aerial assault upon the remaining dragoons even as Ryouma with help from Haguro and Oryou make their bid to catch a Dragoon for Tony Stark to science upon.

So she picks up the pace of attacks to keep the remaining Dragoons busy with her and off of them.
Haguro Good: Haguro has the Dragoons' attention in the plural now!
Bad: Haguro is not as good at taking hits as she's portrayed herself as today.

Fighting back the urge to run and hide, the Abyssal keeps taking those shots from multiple sides even as her tail works double time in trying to block those shots. She eventually settles for keeping her tail on one side while relying on her arms and remaining armor plates to defend herself from the other side, but there's too much fire coming her way for her to move about and cover Ryouma at the same time as well. IF nothing else, she can hope he just sticks close enough to only have to defend himself from one or two directions.

And then he runs out from behind her. She opens her mouth to protest, but stops when he shows his skill with the katana complete with that flashy slashstorm. That's certainly something to look into at some point.

Just not right now. Haguro has priorities!

<<"It's going to be tricky scouting for her here on top of-gh... F-fighting these already. Has anyone seen signs of this...Um. Intruder around lately?">> Haguro barely manages to hide the pain in her voice as she hisses sharply at another shot hitting her side, the flicker in her eye intensifying as her need to defend someone right next to her is all but gone. Instead, she can focus on evasion, weaving, and firing back to add her firepower back to the mix.

She just has to take them one at a time. Switching to her heavier shells, she starts launching high-powered rounds at whatever joints and cannons she can see. She even foregoes her own defenses in favor of blasting bigger holes in the Dragoons than they do in her. Heroes can't let the little things like massive gaping wounds slow them down, and neither will Haguro!

She'll have time to regret the injuries later.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon takes a moment to stare at the unusual pair. He wipes a thumb across his visor, as if that might make her look a little less strange. But after folding it away, he moves forward, nodding and retracting his helmet. When he's asked about casualties, he shakes his head, and there's a firm, determined nod when they mention heading on out. He hefts the Tau Cannon again, spinning it up. There's a glance to Nova Terra and then one to Raziel. They split up to clean the hallways on the way in, but now he gets the feeling they should concentrate their forces to punch clean out.

    "Dropship?" He asks Nova, the first and only time he's spoken during the entire operation. Apparently he'd like her to get it around here so they can extract, probably! He re-establishes his helmet, and heads out, intending to blast through Guard shields with heavy charged Tau shots, and scout the shortest path with the least resistance to getting out of this structure and to somewhere they might be able to get these two extracted with that valuable data!

    He briefly considers asking them to copy over the data. But then he realizes they're from a time when "megabytes of data storage" isn't exactly cutting edge, so he decides against it.
Tony Stark Tony chuckles to himself. "Agent's the number two then, hmm? A long way to go. Don't worry, girls - we're professionals."

He winces, flying in towards Oryou and Ryouma's position as the detective uses his very best WEEB KATANA skills and his draconic wife goes to town removing the 'extra parts' from the Dragoon.

"Well... Mostly professionals. They're good where it counts." Tony offers with a bit of a wry 'I know you know' tone. Landing with a burst of his bootjets having practically not fought the entire time, Stark rises with a faux 'doff the hat' gesture to the Detective. "Nice working with you again - and good work. Let's see what we have here..."

Tony extends a hand, a few small precision tools in the tips of his fingers removing bolts and cutting off sealed stems where necessary to get physical access to the sensor and communication array on the Dragoon.

"Quarantine and clean, Friday, let's whack the pinata and see what delicious candy falls out. Capture data to the secure drive."

"On it." Friday replies, data streaming in.

"Detective, Miss Oryou, this is ideal - I'm always impressed with your results." Stark jaws while waiting for progress bars to finish.
Gideon Kaspar     The fighting in the interior wraps up quickly as the perimeter defense unit, the reinforcement unit, and apparently the units engaged with the two 404 Dolls are wiped out. Timed perfectly with the sounds of armoured boots approaching from adjacent corridors, Forty Five responds to Raziel with "That sounds great to me~" Four-Sixteen interjects with "We can still hold out here for a little while. It's not often we have an opportunity to find information on-" "Your pal~? Sorry, but that's not our mission priority. Save it for later."

    Outside, the battle rages for a little longer, as Tomoe and Haguro must contend with the enemy while Ryouma and Oryou seek to disable a unit with a workable connection. They can hear that the gunfire from inside has stopped while they're still struggling with the last few, and then they have a breather as Tony steps up to the plate to cheese the progression and cut straight to finding out where the Ringleader is.

    As suspected, the units here are actually being operated by a commanding AI, though at a level of delegation beyond what was seen in the previous examples, occupying a level somewhere actually between 'high fidelity direct control' and 'left to pre-desginated strategies'. Friday locates and accesses a low-security feed for sending combat data back to the cloud server level above it for collation, and then the level above that to send it to a commander accessing it.

    Tony's suit's heads up display and holographics instantly turn on to show him and everyone else a video feed view of Intruder, just as his speakers are coopted to play her voice. The short-haired, blue-eyed T-Doll is seated somewhere dark, chin in hand, looking into the camera with some amount of interest.

    "Hello everyone. Pleased to meet you. I wasn't planning on butting in, but it would be discourteous of me if I didn't entertain guests who grace my land with their presence. I should congratulate you on cutting off my forces here, and assure you that there are no hard feelings; it doesn't inconvenience me in the slightest. Master might be unhappy about this, but I'll be glad to welcome you, if you're still adamant on taking your current course of action. You've been very interesting so far, so I look forward to seeing what you do from here on out."

    Intruder smiles to the camera, does a little finger wave, by which point Friday can finally turn it off.
Tomoe there is some good news as the battle goes on for a bit longer, she hears the weapons fire in the base die down. Given there's no panic on the com to signal that allies are down? Seems like the team inside has been successful and shortly after that as she keeps fighting she owes Tony another one. As she finally gets a chance to breathe. Which she takes as she comes in for a landing and then pauses as Intruder makes herself known, it seems this job is far from over. She will go to help any of her comrades who need a hand in the aftermath of the fight. She'll double check up on Haguro as well after the punishing assaults she took today.